Garza: Evaluation was retaliation

Published: Tuesday, December 02, 2008

ERIC FINLEY

Lubbock's city secretary says she received a poor employee evaluation from council members angered over failed recall petitions, her grievance against the former council chief of staff and her cooperation with the FBI in its criminal investigation of city hall.

The employee evaluation for Secretary Becky Garza, given in October by Mayor Tom Martin, said she failed to meet expectations in three categories - situational reasoning, performance under stress and decision making. She met expectations in 14 remaining categories.

The evaluations for City Manager Lee Ann Dumbauld, Garza and an eight-page response Garza sent to council members in November were obtained Monday by The Avalanche-Journal in an open records request.

Martin said Garza's response will be made part of her employee file and she will be re-evaluated in a year. She could choose to have an evaluation in six months, but has not done so, Martin said. The city secretary and manager are hired and evaluated by the seven-member council.

"Every employee has a right to file a response," Martin said, adding that the evaluation was not an attempt to disparage Garza or oust her from her job.

"We're going down the road," he said.

Garza was not in her office Monday afternoon and was not available for comment.

However, in her response to the council, she wrote that council members were retaliating against her for decisions she made in the past two years, specifically on recall petitions of Councilwoman Linda DeLeon.

In 2007 and earlier this year, Garza ruled that three petition drives did not gather enough signatures from eligible voters to force an election on DeLeon's term in office. Some of the petitions were rejected by slim margins.

Garza refused to count the signatures publicly - or in public view, similar to the way ballots are counted after an election - saying doing so would allow access to Social Security numbers in a state database used to verify the signatures.

In her response, Garza said Martin told her it appeared she was trying to count the petitions in secret. Her evaluation also says she relied too heavily upon advice from the city attorney's office during the recall, instead of council members who wanted a public count.

The evaluation also said she can be "inflexible, rigid and unreasonable." In her response, Garza said she believes that stems from her complaints about former council chief of staff Dixon Platt, who was fired in 2007. The city manager dismissed Platt after a series of comments and behavior she said were unprofessional.

Also, Garza wrote that Martin said she should not have posted a town hall meeting as council meeting, which Garza argued was customary. The town hall meeting was held in September by DeLeon and Councilman Floyd Price during debate about whether to lease the City Bank Coliseum to the Texas Tech hockey club. No other council members attended.

The council found Dumbauld, the city manager, did not meet expectations in evaluating or disciplining subordinates. She exceeded expectations in budgeting and fiscal control, and met expectations in 13 other categories.

The council also instructed Dumbauld to develop "realistic" bond projects by Jan. 15.